The Roads Not Taken
by K Hanna Korossy
Summary: Of Grave Importance tag: "What are the odds this ends well?" Dean had asked. If only he knew just how much they'd beaten the odds. Atropos POV (the Fate from "My Heart Will Go On").


_And now for something even more out there than Garth..._

 **The Roads Not Taken**  
K Hanna Korossy

"But you know what I do know?" Dean demanded of his brother. "It ain't the natural order of things. Everything is supposed to end. You know, he was supposed... And now... What are the odds this ends well?"

Unseen by the Winchesters, Bobby Singer's ghost sat in the back seat, listening.

Dean's voice fell. "What are the odds?"

Unseen by all three, Atropos the Fate also observed from the back. And rolled her eyes.

Such shortsighted mortals.

Many years before—a breath of time for the Fates—John Winchester returned from death, the yellow-eyed abomination having made a binding deal for his life. Had he not, the Winchester boys would never have been born. And two decades later, the weak-willed Walsh brothers would have succumbed to Lucifer and Michael's appeals and devastated the earth with the Archangels' wrath.

Then Dean Winchester's life was bargained and returned, yanked away from his Reaper just as Atropos readied her shears. He would lament his own return, but without his presence, John would have killed his only remaining son to curtail Samuel's growing powers. He would not witness the world fall before the Walsh brothers' vessels, killing himself out of despair after his son.

Samuel followed him out of death a year later, also in a bargain with Evil. But his brother would have died if not for Sam's resurrection, crumpled in the wreck of his beloved car, just drunk enough to know what he was doing. Hopeless in Hell, he would succumb to its torments that much faster, the world falling mere months later.

Dean's return from death had been the work of the Great Weaver, Good's intervention instead of Evil's. His restoration was not bound by the Old Rules, but even Atropos' sister Fate Lachesis would not think to argue with the remeasuring of her work. And the Sisters could see that, had he not returned, the abomination Ruby would have twisted Samuel's soul to release the Great Deceiver. The plague then unleashed on mankind would have made Lucifer and Michael's fight unnecessary.

Samuel's return from Hell's cage had been an imperfect plea by the warrior Castiel. It would not have swayed Atropos, except that Samuel had cut his own thread far earlier than had been intended. If the Great Weaver hadn't worked through his unknowing angel, she herself might have been forced to intervene. Without Samuel, the Mother of All Monsters would have released her creations to ravage the world. Dean Winchester would have lived long enough to see his son and lover devoured before succumbing himself. He would have been among the last humans alive.

And while Atropos and her sisters did not weave and wind the lives of angels, she had seen the ripples of divergence from the angel Castiel's return to life. It was because of his existence that Samuel did not die in his madness, that Dean didn't chase after him days later in a futile attack on the Leviathan, and that the world thus did not become food for the ancient creatures.

All because of "unnatural order."

Atropos knew many things, saw far more than most. She knew what was, what was not, and what could have been. But one thing she did not know: why _this_ family had become such a linchpin of human survival, key to so many of the plans of Above and Below. There were few humans whose fates were not in the Fates' hands, but she and her sisters had been denied and directed many times where the Winchesters' lives were concerned. Her own attempts to end their lives had been stopped, not by Castiel, who did not have such power no matter what he and his friend Balthazar believed, but by the command of the One Above. It stung her pride like a nettle. But seeing the divergent paths of humankind, the chaos and destruction that the Winchesters' absence would have brought, silenced her. For if these threads had remained cut, they would have unraveled all of human tapestry, and no Fate would accept that.

"I don't know, man," Samuel said quietly in front. "Seems like we could use all the help we can get on this, you know? We lost Bobby, lost Cas and Frank, even the car—we're pretty much on our own in this."

Singer sighed to himself.

Atropos frowned. Foolish mortals. As if any humans could have survived and accomplished on their own what these two had.

"Still got you and me," Dean replied stubbornly.

And there it was. The reason these two continued to be reunited, the only reason they knew for their survival. Because even the One Above had said that greater love had no man than to give his life for his friend, his brother.

It was something she wondered about sometimes, how that would feel, what it meant.

Samuel hummed a sound of agreement, and the two—and their ghostly passenger—fell into a silent peace.

Atropos shook her head. Enough of this. She had come only to make certain that the Winchesters did not somehow restore the life-thread of their friend Bobby Singer as they had repeatedly managed in the past for their loved ones. But that didn't seem likely now, and she was needed elsewhere. She had shirked her work long enough.

The odd feeling followed her as she departed the still-oblivious humans, however. And if she would have been honest with herself, it almost felt like...longing.

 **The End**


End file.
